Corn’s net long escalates as managed money sees prices firm: CFTC

Data from the US CFTC shows managed money players trading futures and options moved decisively into long positions for corn as they anticipate further price rises ahead on a mixture of bad weather and good demand.

The data, released late Friday and covering the week up to March 6, shows long positions for corn jumped to 349,582 contracts – up by nearly 65,000 contracts in a week, the largest build in a single week across any of the main soybean, corn or wheat futures contracts, according to the CFTC data.

Accompanying the build in long positions came a significant reduction in short positions, which contracted 17.6% to 186,048 lots taking the net long to a 163,534 lots.

Together, it almost triples the length from the previous week’s 59,120 lots.

Soybeans also saw a build in net long positions, with only 11,402 short contracts listed versus the 195,113 long.

Both corn and soybeans have seen expectations around higher prices coalescing around poor weather in Argentina, congested logistics in the US and good demand globally.

Wheat saw a more mixed picture, although broadly expectations focused on firmer prices, with the net short on soft red winter wheat declining as the net long on hard red winter wheat increased.

HRW wheat’s net length rose to 20,759 lots as positions on both long and short fell, with short positions falling further, down 15,200 lots to 35,919, while long positions saw a relatively modest contraction of 6,000 positions to 56,678.

On SRW, a substantial fall on short contracts nearly halved the net short from 60,632 to 32,531, with a modest increase in long positions to 85,956 lots.